


A Rude Awakening

by Haberdasher



Series: Elias Feels [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Aftermath, Aftermath of Possession, Aftermath of Violence, Based on a Tumblr Post, Blind Character, Blindness, Blood, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Confusion, Disability, Disabled Character, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gen, Original Elias Bouchard - Freeform, POV Male Character, POV Outsider, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Pain, Possession, Post-Canon, Swearing, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22391857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: Elias Bouchard has one hell of a time when he wakes up.Inspired by this art: https://ehlihr.tumblr.com/post/190424322322/elias-bouchard-wakes-up-and-asks-what-happened
Series: Elias Feels [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617625
Comments: 22
Kudos: 298





	A Rude Awakening

The first thing Elias registered when he woke up was pain. He had a few aches and pains all across his body, but the majority of it was centered on his head, his face feeling like it was burning. He’d thought he’d felt agony before, when he’d gotten some especially nasty hangovers in uni, but this? This was on a whole new level.

The second thing Elias registered was that he couldn’t see a thing. He couldn’t even tell if it was light out or not. The world was just a sea of blankness, almost like his eyes were closed tight, but when he tried to open them nothing happened except even more pain punishing him for the attempt.

The rest of the situation came to him more gradually. The cold, hard ground that he was splayed out upon, which felt almost unnaturally smooth. The wet, sticky feeling coating his face that had to be blood. The murmurs in the background that he couldn’t quite make out, belonging to voices that he was pretty sure he didn’t recognize.

Elias groaned and tried to push himself off the ground with one hand, which quickly proved to be a mistake. Moving his head even slightly upwards sent a shock of white-hot pain coursing through him, and he sunk back again, getting another jolt of pain for his trouble when his head made contact with the floor once more.

The only upside to his attempt at movement was that the murmurs in the background grew louder, enough that he could hear some of what was being said, though it didn’t help that several of the voices kept talking over one another.

“Is that-”

“Shh, don’t-”

“-think he’s awake.”

Elias took the opportunity to voice the main question that was going through his mind.

“What the hell is going on?”

“I could ask you the same thing.” It was a woman’s voice, awfully calm given the situation at hand. (She had to know, right? Between the pain and the blood, she _had_ to know that this was something of a rude awakening for him.) A bit blunt, too, given that she was talking to someone who’d clearly been badly injured. Not even a hint of sympathy for his predicament in that voice.

Elias let out a shaky laugh, which made his sides ache slightly. “I asked first.”

“Yeah, well, tough. You’re still going first.”

“I don’t- I don’t _know_ what’s going on, that’s why I asked _you_ -”

“Jon?”

The next voice--”Jon”, presumably, whoever that was--was a man’s voice, also calm and level in its own way.

“Who are you?”

Something about the question dug into Elias somehow, made a tingle run through his body, convinced him that he _had_ to answer, and answer immediately (not that he was terribly keen to avoid giving information to those who might actually know what the hell all this was about)...

“My name’s Elias.”

Jon didn’t say anything, and neither did any of the other voices, but Elias could just _feel_ that somehow that wasn’t enough, that they needed more from him.

“Elias Bouchard. I- I work at the Magnus Institute. I’m James Wright’s secretary.”

“James Wright?” Another woman’s voice, one with a bit more energy to it.

That strange need Elias had felt to answer was gone, but he figured it couldn’t hurt to explain further. “He’s the big boss there. Uh, the head. That’s his official title, anyway, Head of the Magnus Institute.”

Somebody let out a sharp laugh, though Elias didn’t have a clue why.

“He’s not lying, at least.” Jon said. “He can’t be, not to me.”

“So what does _that_ mean?” Another man’s voice, a bit higher-pitched, a bit unsure of itself.

“You don’t think...” The first woman again, still sounding thoroughly unimpressed by Elias’ answers, though he wasn’t sure what more she expected from him.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Elias?” It was Jon speaking again, and with the question came that same weird, tingly pressure to respond.

“James called me into his office, and I- I honestly thought I’d gotten in trouble somehow, but instead he started talking about how he’d served the Institute for so long, and how it was about time for somebody else to take his place running it so he could go off and retire. When he got to that bit I figured he was just letting me know I’d have a new boss, but then he said _I_ should be the new head, which- which is ridiculous, really, I work hard and all but that’s way beyond my pay grade, I can’t imagine myself _running_ the place-”

Somebody--one of the women, Elias thought--snorted with amusement, which, yes, it was an amusing mental image for him too, but given that he didn’t know these people in the slightest, why would _they_ understand how weird that had been?

“But James insisted, said something about having to make final preparations before handing the Institute over- over to _me_! He stopped talking, and then... well, and then this. Whatever this is.”

Things were silent for a long moment before Elias spoke up again.

“Since it seems like you’ve finished badgering me for my life’s story, can somebody _please_ tell me what the hell is going on?” He paused for a moment before adding, “And call 999 while you’re at it, I think I need an ambulance, my face hurts and I can’t see a thing-”

“That’s because we took your eyes out.”

Why did that woman sound so... _okay_ with that? Happy, even?

“Daisy, don’t say it like _that_.”

Oh, God, they were all some kind of- of creepy serial-killing psychopaths, weren’t they? And he was at their mercy, unless he could get up, find his way out of wherever he was, besides in the middle of some kind of bad horror movie-

Elias tried to push himself off the ground again and managed to pull himself into a sitting position before pain and nausea got the best of him. He started feeling the ground around him, trying to get his bearings, possibly even latch onto something he could use as a weapon, though he didn’t even know exactly where his would-be opponents were-

“Calm down, Elias. It’s going to be alright.”

Elias laughed, because he’d rather laugh than cry.

“You _took my bloody eyes out_! That’s pretty far from alright!”

“Not in this line of business.” Was that supposed to be a joke? If so, it was an awfully dry one. And confusing, but that was quickly becoming par for the course.

“Basira, _please_.” Jon sounded annoyed at her, but not truly upset.

“I’m just saying.” The woman--Basira--replied. “Didn’t you try to get Martin to do it with you that one time?”

The other man--Martin, perhaps?--spoke up. “I thought we agreed not to talk about that!”

...were they a cult? Some sort of eye-gouging cult? And they... what, went after him because he was supposed to become James’ successor, or something?

He had been in James’ office just a moment ago, and now he was stuck on the ground somewhere with his eyes gouged out while a bunch of people he didn’t know talked about how they’d considered gouging their _own_ eyes out...

“...what the _fuck_.”

Elias hadn’t really intended it as a question, because he was getting the sense that he wouldn’t get a straight answer from these people, and he wasn’t even entirely intending for them to hear him, but his speech did bring their ongoing discussion to a close.

“...you really don’t know about any of this, do you?” Probably-Martin said.

Elias shook his head, then brought a hand up to his forehead because _fuck_ that hurt, and if steadying his head meant getting blood on his hand, well, that seemed to be the least of his problems right about now.

“You weren’t aware of the presence of the Eye at all?” That was Jon again. At least he was starting to get a handle of who the people he was speaking with were, even if everything else about the situation was still up in the air.

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ what is with you people and eyes-”

“The Beholding, then, if you prefer. One of Smirke’s Fourteen.”

“I- look, I don’t know what all this freaky cult speak of yours is getting at, okay?”

Somebody sighed.

“This is going nowhere.”

Basira was the one who said it, but Elias couldn’t help but agree, though he only expressed it through a soft “you’re telling me.”

“Alright, alright, what do-” Jon paused, hesitated. “I would like to know how much you know about Jonah Magnus.”

That, at least, was a name Elias recognized. It was a start, perhaps. “I mean, I read up on the history of the Institute a bit when I got hired, but-”

“Anything beyond that?”

“I... what d’you think I’m gonna say, that I go have drinks with the guy every Friday?” Elias laughed a little at his own joke, but wasn’t terribly surprised that none of the others joined in. “He’s from the _1800s_. So no, nothing beyond that. Why? Is there some big historical revelation I’m missing here?”

A few people spoke up at once in response, and finally, _finally_ Elias started to hear a bit of sympathy in their voices.

“He- he really didn’t-”

“Oh dear.”

“And I thought _you_ were clueless-”

“Hey!”

“Don’t deny it-”

“Elias.” Jon’s voice was calm and serious as always, and the others settled down at the sound of his voice. “That conversation you had with James Wright. When did that happen?”

Elias didn’t see how this had to do with anything, how the exact time of his last memory would help explain why a bunch of eye-gouging cultist freaks had gotten their hands on him, but he felt that strange pressure he’d felt before when Jon had asked him questions, knew he _had_ to speak, had to share his response no matter what-

“Well, it wasn’t long after I took my lunch--I think it was two, maybe two-thirty?” After a brief pause, Elias added, “In the afternoon.”

That eerie pressure didn’t let up, and as Elias felt the need to continue specifying, part of him started considering why. He was guessing that Jon and the pressure were connected, that if it was still there it meant that Jon wanted to know more, but if Elias had to specify _which_ afternoon... had he been out for more than a few hours? He was far from a doctor, but he knew getting knocked out for long could mess up your mind something fierce, so if he’d been unconscious for _days_... that... well, that was definitely not good news. Not that he’d really been expecting any at this point.

“On the fourth.”

Still the pressure. Okay, so the month had changed recently, but was it really so ambiguous that he had to state it? “Of... May...”

Even that wasn’t enough, and... they had to be fucking with him, right? There was no way a calendar date wasn’t enough information for them, unless their freaky eye cult didn’t use the same calendar as normal people or something...

“1996?”

The pressure vanished, which in one sense was a relief, but in another made things even scarier because it suggested that they really were satisfied now, which meant that they _hadn’t_ been by him supplying the month and date and time of day.

A long silence fell over the room.

“We need to tell him.”

Elias was pretty sure Basira’s words were directed towards the rest of her little gang rather than towards him, given that he was being referred to in the third person now (which, rude), but he responded anyway. “Tell me what?”

“Elias...” Basira hesitated for a moment before continuing. “It’s not 1996 anymore. It’s 2019.”

Elias laughed, soft and shakily. “Don’t- don’t try to convince me this is some bullshit time travel conspiracy-”

“Not time travel. Not exactly.”

Elias started to open his mouth to ask how else he could have skipped over two decades in the blink of an eye, but Jon spoke up to answer his question before he could even pose it.

“Your body’s been here the whole time, you just haven’t been the one using it. The man you know as James Wright is actually Jonah Magnus, and shortly after that conversation you had with him, he went from controlling James’ body to controlling yours while maintaining control over the Institute. While we’ve worked for the Institute, we knew him as Elias Bouchard.”

“Or ‘that asshole.’“ Daisy added. Somebody Elias couldn’t identify let out a sharp laugh in response.

There was a lot to take in here, and most of it sounded like sci-fi bullshit, which had never really been Elias’ thing. Sure, he worked for the Magnus Institute, but he’d chosen his workplace less because he had any actual interest in the supposed paranormal encounters being chronicled there and more because they were willing to take him and it seemed like a cushy enough office job, possibly a way to pivot into academia even, if he played his cards right and really felt like delving into that ivory tower life. And he’d stayed because, upon arriving there, he found that the work was decent and the coworkers were nice enough and James was a surprisingly understanding boss.

James, who according to them was actually the guy who had founded the Magnus Institute back in the 1800s, and had stolen over two decades of Elias’ life in order to keep control of it.

“...do you have any proof that you’re not just crazy, or, or making all of this up, or both? Because if you expect me to believe this without any proof, well, that’s one hell of a leap...”

There was a pause before anyone responded, and for a moment Elias felt that his instincts had been validated by that pause, that all this crazy talk about his body being controlled by someone else for twenty-plus years was just that, crazy talk and nothing more.

Then Basira asked, clearly and pointedly, “Did you always have that scar on your left hand?”

“I-”

Daisy spoke up in agreement. “Your body must have changed a lot over twenty-three years, even without us taking your eyes. New scars, wrinkles...”

“He’s not _that_ old.” Probably-Martin objected.

“He’s not that _young_ , either.”

They kept bickering a bit, but Elias tuned it out as he ran one hand across the other, seeing what he could feel, whether anything felt off in the way they were suggesting. Granted, he wasn’t exactly in the habit of examining his hands by sense of touch alone, and he went into it fully expecting to be unsure if anything had changed, but...

But he could feel that scar Basira mentioned on his left hand, a thin line raised slightly above the rest of the skin, and no, that definitely hadn’t been there beforehand. His fingernails were shorter than he remembered them being, too--he’d been procrastinating on filing them for some time now--and the paper cut from last Tuesday, and the handful of skin tags left from absentmindedly picking at his cuticles, were nowhere to be found.

“...shit.”

“I’m sorry.” Jon’s voice had more emotion in it now than he’d heard in it before, though it seemed closer to pity than the sympathy Elias would have preferred. At least it seemed genuine enough.

“So, uh, how does this all tie into you gouging my eyes out, exactly?”

“It’s the only way to get away from it--the Institute, the Beholding, Jonah Magnus. Leave the Eye by losing your sight, or not at all.”

“I honestly thought it’d just kill him--er, you, I guess.”

“But evidently not.”

Elias felt like he was going to be sick.

“What about- about Jonah Magnus? If he’s not in my body-”

“We’re hoping to get to the Panopticon and kill his original body before he can take over anyone else.”

Elias didn’t have a clue what the Panopticon was. Elias also didn’t particularly care right this moment.

“If- if all this is true--and I’m still not sure that’s the case, mind you, but if it _is_ , if Jonah Magnus made me lose twenty-three years overnight... fuck, I’ll kill the bastard myself.”

Someone let out a low whistle, while someone else let out a loud, raucous laugh.

“That’s the spirit!”

“I take back all the times I cursed your name. Elias Bouchard, you’re alright in my book.”

(There was a backstory there, obviously, but Elias was in no hurry to learn the details.)

Elias felt a hand grip his, one that was soft and warm, and as that hand helped pull him up, he heard Probably-Martin say, “Welcome to the team, Elias.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


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